Thursday, May 12, 2016

Cruz continues to be a jerk

After Trump handed Cruz his as for the seventh straight time in Indiana, the senator gracefully conceded the race.

Now, after losing two more primaries, Cruz is back welshing on the deal., He vowed this weekend to try to steal more delegates that Donald Trump won fair and square.From Politico:

Ted Cruz isn’t giving up.

While Donald Trump dispatches three advisers to Texas’s convention in Dallas this week and makes a pitch for party unity, his team will be running up against a Cruz operation that is still maneuvering to stuff the state’s delegation with allies the senator could call on to snub the presumptive nominee.

“We have a busy weekend planned,” said a source familiar with the Cruz campaign’s plans.

Cruz is scheduled to deliver an address at the Texas convention after a week of hinting he could jump back into the presidential contest and urging activists to thwart the New Yorker’s takeover of the GOP’s policy platform. And despite dropping out of the race more than a week ago, the vanquished presidential contender has deployed at least one paid adviser to the Texas Republican convention – Tyler Norris, his state director. (Trump has three advisers: state director Joshua Jones, deputy director Eric Mahroum and Houston-area director Kayla Hensley.)

It’s not just Texas where Cruz is still playing.

The senator’s team remains active in several of the other eight state conventions selecting delegates this week – from Nebraska to Oklahoma to Nevada. Those conventions, along with party meetings in Arkansas, Florida and Wisconsin, will be selecting 389 national delegates, nearly a sixth of the entire convention.

Senator Cruz is a despicable man whom the National Enquirer reported is a serial cheater on his wife, which is why she ordered him to fire his female staffers.

Cruz is a Washington insider who has spent most of his adult life in Washington sucking up to the power brokers. Elected to the Senate, senators sized him up and passed on working with the sneak.

He is one of those fellows who tells Christian conservatives what they want to hear as he thumps the Bible and praises the Constitution, but whom I never quite believe it. Bobby Byrd was the same way and we saw what a phony he was. To be sure, Byrd never stole, never did it for financial gain, and likely never cheated on his wife. But I never trusted Byrd. I praised him on the good he did. But he was not my cup of tea.

The party should tell Cruz in no uncertain terms that their are consequences to such actions.

But for what it's worth, I've been following you happily (though silently) for years, since back in your dailymail.com days. I only comment because I respect you, and I'm dismayed by what I perceive as an unfortunate Trump-sized blind spot.

Well, except for Colorado, which has a wacky post-caucus delegate-selection process, didn't he simply work to convince delegates that he'd be a good choice if they can't come to a first-ballot decision? As I've mentioned previously, Lincoln did the same thing. Seemed Christian enough at the time.

As for Colorado, the Trump campaign tried to line up delegates there themselves, using the same means the Cruz campaign did. They just couldn't get their act together and failed badly.

Shrug, you'll doubtless continue believing what you want against all other evidence. I'll believe the Denver Posts's take on Colorado's restuls:

Cruz supporters worked quietly behind the scenes to build an organization to get like-minded Republicans to the March 1 precinct caucuses and capitalized on the Trump campaign's failure to adapt to the system.

Trump's campaign didn't put a visible paid staffer on the ground in Colorado until last week, when it hired Patrick Davis, a Colorado Springs political consultant, to organize national delegate candidates at the 7th Congressional District convention in Arvada. By then, Cruz had won the first six delegates. Even then, the energy behind Trump's campaign didn't materialize in support. He managed to win only seven alternate delegates.

The Trump campaign's list of preferred national delegates distributed at the state convention on Saturday was riddled with errors and misspellings that only further hurt its chances.

...in other words, Trump tried to play, but he stunk it up.

His genius of course, was turning his own incompetence into a cudgel to use against his opponent.

I don't recall Cruz giving a gracious concession speech. I heard a speech which sounded like his acceptance speech at the convention right up until the part where he said he's suspending his campaign. He never acknowledged that he had been decisively beaten, never mentioned Trump and of course didn't have any thing nice to say about any one else.

With 375 delegates left to win in the remaining primaries (starting with Oregon next Tuesday) and Trump needing only 103 more to get the 1,237 majority, the game is over. Lyin' Ted lost. Trump won. It is over.

At this point, Cruz is looking like the Black Knight in the Holy Grail.